Modo de vida e a prática de atividade física em academia a céu aberto: relações e contradições

Abstract

In Brazil, strategies are being developed with focus on physical activity practice stimulus, in order to fight sedentary behavior and obesity. Among those are the creation of public academies, especially those with free access. Located in parks and squares, they provide an incentive to the use of public spaces to perform body practices and physical activities. These spaces try to act mainly as habit changers and their use seems to occur because of questions linked to the popularization of the active way of life. The understanding of the relations established in these spaces is necessary, especially the intervention over the subjects way of life that favors health promotion. In this study, the proposed general objective was to analyze the way of life and its relation with the physical activity practice in Open Sky Academies (AaCA). A qualitative study is presented, sustained in the dialectics theoreticalmethodological referential. The study was developed in two phases: mapping and depth analysis. The mapping allowed the identification of 18 AaCA in the Central-South Region of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais; analyzing their location, attendants characteristics, developed activities and people dedication time to the AaCA devices. Among the academies, one was elected to be included in the second phase, which consisted in the depth analysis. It was made from the empirical reality of the AaCA located in the República Líbano Square, Barragem Santa Lúcia. Its choice was due to the free access and the heterogeneous public. In this phase of the study, data were obtained from observations made during 26 visits to the AaCA, registered in a field diary and audio records. Also, 18 attendants of the AaCA were interviewed and informations from a large scale circulation newspaper and from a blog were included as complementary material. The empirical material gathered was discussed under orientation of the Critical Discourse Analysis. Results and discussion were organized in three: Open sky academy: possible encounters, Physical activity spaces and Way of life and physical activity: relations and contradictions. The results indicate that the AaCAs are change devices in the urban landscape. The relevance associated to the gratuity and the easiness of access to the AaCA are perceived, acting as an alternative to sedentariness for those who cannot afford to pay for a private gym. This way, the discourses of the interviewed objectify the academy and its use as a social practice. There is a clear relation between the physical activity practice and the health-illness process marked by the textual element of temporality either as a compensation for suffered losses or as the expectation of future anticipation. The physical activity practice assumes the role of a risky behavior attenuator and there is a temporal regulation that indicates a transition moment when the practice start to compose the participants quotidian. The AaCA space use revealed itself filled with tension in the fight between classes. The landscape itself is composed by the poor houses side by side with the big luxury buildings and shows the picture of the social differentiation of the participants that use the AaCA. There are distinctions between the hours chosen for the academy use, the way they deal with the physical activity, the time dispensed and the relations established with the other attendants of each class. A difference is perceived in the way of life of the distinct social classes that frequent the space, with access restricted to the basic needs in one group and the access to an amplified consume in the other. These conditions have repercussions in the physical activity adherence and other healthy habits, determining who can or cannot dedicate himself to the health and body care. Discourses were evidenced that revealed a fight for the right of using the space in an extension the class division. In the web of established relations between the way of life and the physical activity practice also resides the aesthetics components, directly linked to the body care. In the AaCA, the body is the concrete place in which the physical activity shows its results trespassed by the perspective of the healthy body and the ill body. Terms as vitality and conditioning enunciate a comprehension of the physical activity effects over the healthy body that counter the discourse of the ill body, marked by expressions like recovery, pain and medicine. The AaCA is a space in the city occupied with producing healthy and illness free bodies by means of utilitarian, moral and aesthetic actions. It is concluded that the physical activity practice is impacted by peoples way of life. The AaCA is a potential device for health promotion and remit to a discursive production in the health field. Its presence in the urban environment is an opportunity to the physical activity practice. In contradiction, there is an intense quantification of risky behavior, reproducing the individual and moralizing control of the active way of life, with the body alienation. The understanding about the quotidian in the AaCA is trespassed by differentiation between social classes that determines the way of life and relates with the production and consume of physical activity.